


Needs No Earthquake

by lonelywalker



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Hints of asphyxiation, M/M, background Hannibal/Alana, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 18:57:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1719308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Post 2x08 - Su-zakana) After their eventful and intimate night at the stables, Will asks Hannibal to take him back to the office. He intends to offer himself up to protect Alana... but perhaps he's deluding himself more than he's manipulating Hannibal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needs No Earthquake

_“That pit of blackness lies beneath us everywhere. The firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.”  
– Nathaniel Hawthorne_

“Your office,” Will said.

He had paused for a few moments in the stables, knowing he was waiting for Hannibal to pull the trigger. It would have been nothing like the Ripper’s style, not a death that would appeal to Hannibal’s sense of aesthetics. But it would have been a fast and simple way to deal with the problem. Which was no longer Peter’s torment or the deaths of innocents, but the way Ingram was sniveling on the ground, weeping with relief, coughing up horse guts amid his tears.

Will had gazed into Hannibal’s eyes, standing amid the horrors of birth and death, and been _irritated_ by the circumstances. Not disgusted or repulsed, not empathetic with the designs of a killer, but vexed. Vexed by the way another, equally horrific, fact of life would have to be delayed.

He would have enjoyed the dirt on Hannibal’s coat, the hay in his hair. Might even have enjoyed Ingram watching, or the prospect of Peter walking in, if only he could have been certain they’d be quiet.

For a while, nothing had been quiet. They’d been good officers of the law, he and Hannibal, for two men who were anything but. Jack had seemed most surprised by the fact no one but the horse was dead. Ingram was taken away – and Peter too, although Will resolved to revisit that issue in the daylight. And Hannibal offered Will a ride home.

Whichever home he meant, it was the wrong one. Will’s house held too many memories of the man Hannibal truly was. And Hannibal’s… well, he’d find Alana’s hairs on satin sheets, in the unlikely event Hannibal didn’t compulsively strip the bed each morning. The office was hardly the safest space either, with its ghosts of Franklin, Tobias, Abigail, and how many more? But it felt like a place they’d once been on equal footing, and where they might someday be again.

Hannibal hung up their coats and set out glasses for them both without asking, studying the label of a wine bottle for far longer than should ever have been necessary. Will lingered by the door before snapping on the lock and sitting down with sudden resolve. He wouldn’t have selected wine, any wine, himself. Although this red was doubtless exquisite, there was no chance it would get him drunk fast enough. Still, it was a large bottle…

“I find,” Hannibal said, leaning back against his desk, “that strangulation is perhaps the most interesting method for murder.”

“Oh?” Will knocked back his glass like a shot, poured another.

“It can be used to induce unconsciousness without causing permanent harm to the victim. Of course, the same can be said of many drugs, but there’s a personal element to feeling the life go out of someone when their own pulse is beating against yours.”

“Naturally you’re not speaking from personal experience.”

Hannibal smiled. “I thought we were being honest with each other, Will.”

“Aren’t we?”

“In addition to other purposes, choking or strangulation is also used in many situations without murderous intent. Judo is an Olympic sport in which the combatants intend to deprive each other of oxygen as a matter of course. Which is not to mention those who seek it out for sexual pleasure.”

Will had thought of Alana in the stables too, had thought of her in the context of Hannibal’s bed far too many times since his release from Chilton’s personal psychiatric playpen. He’d run through the expected emotions in short order though – betrayal, anger, fear, guilt – and, as he lay amid the comfortable blankets of his own bed, his body had only really taken an interest in _jealousy_.

It was a simple enough reaction to explain away. Arousal was difficult to generate in a cell where anyone might appear at any moment, when the bed was cold and hard, the food lousy, his fantasies terrifying. Released from all that, his body was only responding as it had before. He was still a young man, with all the needs of a young man. His cock had been thick and heavy in his hand as he thought about that kind of intimacy, that kind of _access_. He could imagine only so much: the design of Hannibal’s bedroom, the ways Hannibal could pretend to be enamored in bed. He’d never found out those things about Alana either, but when he closed his eyes and parted his legs and stroked faster, it wasn’t Alana provoking his eventual release.

Now he thought about Hannibal’s hands around Alana’s throat and dismissed it. Alana wasn’t the type, and Hannibal was _playing_ to type: the nice, sophisticated, harmless boyfriend who could, nevertheless, protect her from all evil. Thinking about Hannibal’s hands around his own throat seemed a more complicated proposition. He tried to focus on the wine instead.

“Do you remember your first?” he asked, after enough time had passed that his voice rang out in the silence like a chime or church bell.

Hannibal cocked his head slightly. “Of course.”

“Was it personal?”

“Isn’t it always?”

“You should know it isn’t.” Will finished his second glass and considered a third. It would be decadent, dangerous, but he wasn’t going home tonight. “There are mistakes people regret. And there are people who just need to do it once, because they know they’ll be doing it for the rest of their lives.”

Hannibal nodded. “They need to make a start.”

“And you made a start before I ever walked into this room. Before we ever met. You knew what you would do with me. But did you know what you would do with Jack? With Alana?”

“I’ve known Alana for a very long time.”

“Yes.” Will ran his fingers down over the arm of the chair, feeling the smoothness of its edge. “Which only makes it more evident that everything that’s happened between you has not been _entirely_ a private matter.”

“Which is to say?”

“Which is to say… Alana’s attractive in many, many ways. But she’s not the one you want. Or at least not the only one.”

Hannibal pushed away from the desk, took his glass and came to sit, one leg casually crossed over the other. The pose of some English aristocrat. Will imagined him in a white summer suit, a carnation blooming in his pocket. And perhaps he would be that man soon, or a thousand different men throughout the world, concealing himself within effortless sophistication.

“ _Want_ ,” Hannibal said, “is a fascinating concept. We are judged, and found wanting.”

Will smiled. “Do you find me wanting, Dr. Lecter?”

Hannibal looked at him, and not just his eyes, for a long time. He stood up abruptly and turned away, threading his tie, unbuttoning his collar. Will had seen him many times in slightly more casual attire, cooking in his kitchen. But the act of undressing, of _becoming_ less formal, was rare to witness. It was the deliberate shedding of defenses alongside restraints.

“We all lack some virtues,” Hannibal responded eventually. “We all desire to possess that which we do not have.”

“Virtues?”

“Not always.” The vest next, pinched at the medial crease, folded and laid over the back of the chair. “Our desires are mortal, and often of the flesh. Gluttony, sloth.”

“Lust,” Will said. He felt it was expected.

Hannibal met his eyes once more. “Even love. How much would we do for our loved ones? How many transgressions would we commit for their sakes? God does not sanction love, Will, only love of God. Who deserves it least of all.”

“Alana deserves it more than most.”

“I agree.”

“And you know neither of us can give it to her. We are found wanting, because we want another.”

He watched Hannibal think. Watched him swallow. “I enjoy my time with Dr. Bloom very much.”

Will leaned back in his chair a little, relaxed, spread his legs just a fraction wider. “And yet, if you could have me, really have me, you’d set her free.”

“I believe even you would acknowledge that one can only ever set oneself free.”

“Then perhaps that’s what I’m doing with you. In so many ways.” A calmness came over him, words flowing in an easy rhythm towards some reassuring inevitability. “Do you imagine that really having me only means adjusting my point of view, helping me to see from your perspective? I don’t think you do, Hannibal. You understand sensuality. You understand the effect touch and scent and flavor have on people. One touch from you tonight changed the course of my history. And we both know why. It’s the same reason we’re here.”

It only took a step for Hannibal’s leg to be between his, Hannibal’s hand once again on his cheek. Will closed his eyes and took a deep breath of expensive cologne. “Strangulation is intimate,” Hannibal said. “A display of physical power, yes, but intimate too. We can feel death in other ways, the pump of gushing blood over our hands. But strangulation preserves the body. It conveys respect, even love. As though the person is not dead at all, but only sleeping.”

Will turned his head slightly towards the hand. “Would you sleep with me?”

“Not in that way,” Hannibal said. “Not yet.”

Will reached out and took Hannibal’s head in both hands and kissed him. “In this way, then.”

One of his high school classes had led him to a textbook detailing the suffering of prisoners who were ordered to dig their own graves. Ordered, on pain of death, to take off their clothes and watches and jewelry. Will pulled his sweater up over his head as Hannibal moved back just enough to let him. So many buttons on both their shirts, each one a delay, a delicious second of denial.

Hannibal kissed him again, slipping hands under Will’s shoulders and hauling him up so they stood almost eye to eye. How did Hannibal seduce Alana the first time? But no, that wasn’t the question at all. Will knew all too well how Hannibal had mastered the art of seduction in all its forms. The question was what that seduction seamlessly flowed into, or burst into, like a serene river plummeting down a cliff face.

“This is a weakness,” Will said as Hannibal took his shirt from him, folded it along with his own. Even a crumpled shirt thrown aside in the throes of passion would wound him, distract him, and that was a weakness of sorts too, if a fastidious nature wasn’t precisely what had let him maintain his freedom. Clearer weaknesses could be seen in their bodies. The tight pull of the old bullet-drawn scar on Will’s shoulder, the angry red lines on Hannibal’s forearms that might yet fade into invisibility.

“Desire is a fact of existence.” Hannibal kissed Will’s jaw before tilting his head, breathing in what had to be sweat and dirt and blood, hair from a stable, gunmetal from his hands. “The question is how we can channel that desire… into something useful.”

Hannibal’s hair was silky under his hand. _What remarkable detail,_ Will found himself thinking. _Individual strands, just like a real boy._

“Is this useful?”

“It is unavoidable.”

What a thing was a body: evidence of so many things, scrutinized at a crime scene or in a lab. Pick apart Hannibal’s corpse now, and what a story it might tell. But the living body under Will’s hands shared no secrets but for skin and muscle and hair. There was no way for anyone to look at Hannibal, even _all_ of Hannibal, and guess that these muscles were not strictly for health or vanity, that these hands had killed more people than had ever been under his surgical knife. If Will knew nothing more than his hands, the attraction might be easier to handle. Yet if he knew nothing more, there would be little attraction in the first place.

“Was it unavoidable with Alana, too?” Will let his hands settle on Hannibal’s belt buckle.

“Perhaps for her.”

Will dropped his hands to his sides and moved over to the chaise longue. “Take off your pants.”

Was it possible to give himself the illusion of control, here, unarmed, in Hannibal’s domain? But Hannibal, he knew, didn’t enjoy weapons much. Even nude, Will had a mind and a body, which were all Hannibal had needed to kill Beverly Katz, and how many others?

He sat, pulled loose his belt, and watched with mild surprise as Hannibal did the same. How vulnerable he could feel, with the air of a vast office on his skin. Clothes offered barely any protection in a fight, but they _felt_ like armor. Will kicked off his shoes by the heels, stuffed his socks in each, and folded his slacks in a way that might leave Hannibal free to focus on the topic at hand.

That done, Will cast a glance at Hannibal and sank back onto the chaise longue, lying supine across it, feet still planted on the floor. They could have found a bed to do this in, as Alana and Hannibal surely had, but then Alana had never made this room in any way her own.

Hannibal moved noiselessly, the only alert to his presence an exhalation against Will’s thigh before hands gripped him there, and a wet, wet mouth… Oh, of _course_ Hannibal would be good at this. The thought slipped through his mind, vanished as he moved his legs further apart, raised his hips and pushed deeper in. “Hannibal.” He’d never said the same with such naked need before, with no calculation behind it at all. Who could measure words with his cock thickening and stiffening within Hannibal’s mouth, with Hannibal sucking him like… Like he was absolutely intended to enjoy it, and that Hannibal intended to enjoy it too.

Will drew a hand over his face, breathing already strained, and lifted his head just a fraction, to _see_. “Oh fuck…”

Part of it had to be how long he’d gone without, part a release of the extreme tension that marked his meetings with Hannibal… but mainly that Hannibal was revealing himself to be a truly expert lover. Of course. _Of course._ But it was a revelation that meant little beyond the moment. A moment filled with pleasure Will wanted more than anything. That was how Alana had been undone, he thought, thinking of Hannibal on his knees before her, too. He’d imagined her as being unusually weak and pliable, but this… This wasn’t something anyone could defend against, once they’d asked for it and laid themselves bare.

“Don’t-” Will lifted his head again. “I don’t want to come yet.”

His skin was saliva-cold when Hannibal let him be. “ _Want_ ,” Hannibal said, his hand moving to work Will’s erection. “What do you want, Will?”

“What do you want from Alana?”

Hannibal stood, stretching long limbs. Will pillowed an arm behind his head. Looked. Hannibal’s was a body that could be destroyed, too, cut up and ripped apart. A body that could flush dark with arousal, his cock already half-hard.

“Satisfaction,” Hannibal said, and moved in close, one knee up on the chaise longue, then the other, straddling Will or pinning him down. “What would you want from Alana?”

Will lifted his free hand, splayed the fingers out against Hannibal’s sternum. “Comfort,” he said.

Hannibal smiled infrequently, but there was a flash of interest in his eyes that Will often sought in lieu of laughter. “Open your mouth.”

He’d tried to view only dispassionately the many meals Hannibal had fed him – the people who were friends or strangers, or bodies in the FBI morgue. Was it possible to feel Hannibal’s cock in his mouth now, his hand slipping through Hannibal’s saliva on his own, _without_ feeling?

The position was awkward enough to keep his mind narrowed to the physicality of it, to the push of Hannibal’s hips, the slide of Hannibal past his lips and over his tongue, pressing into his throat. _Breathe, suck, don’t choke, don’t gag._ That was it. That, and the warmth at his own groin, the intense arousal in some primal part of his brain.

Hannibal rocked against him, fucking his mouth, and Will… Will closed his eyes and lost himself in his senses. It was something like strangulation, something like domination, _oh_ , and he was _so_ close to coming over his hand like a hanged man when Hannibal pulled back. 

“Do you…” Will coughed, wiped his mouth. “Do you do that with Alana?”

“Alana,” Hannibal said, “is not here.”

Will was taking deep breaths, willing away those waves of pleasure that had threatened to overwhelm him. “She’s always here, if we are. Tell me how you… how you make love to her.”

How you _fuck_ her had been in his mind, with images of Alana face down among expensive Egyptian sheets, but no, that wasn’t right at all.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Hannibal’s voice held an amused tone. He’d started feeling very heavy atop Will’s chest.

Will sucked down another breath, steadying his mind. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t thought about it. But his thoughts had been tainted by suppositions and bias. “You’re gentle with her,” he said, letting his fingertips drift over Hannibal’s stitches. “Gentle in such a way that she knows you could crush her. But she thinks that’s tenderness for now. One day she might take it for a threat.”

Hannibal’s thumb began on his lips, stroked down over his chin to press ever so slightly on his throat. “One never can tell.”

“You love oral because of the effect it has. You do her bidding, but she’s entirely under your control. And then you like her to ride you, for the same reason. You’re fucking her in so many ways, Hannibal, but she has no idea.”

“How judgmental of you.” Hannibal moved over to one side, sitting back against the raised end. “As though one cannot lose oneself to pleasure without being a victim of it.”

Will turned, pushing himself up. “And do you ever lose yourself to pleasure?”

“Perhaps you’ll find out.” Hannibal nodded over towards his desk. “If you so wish, you’ll find certain accessories in the drawer with my art supplies.”

It would seem braver to say that nothing was necessary, no lubricant, no condom, just raw, desperate, animalistic rutting despite the sophisticated surroundings. But it would seem foolish too. Will got to his feet.

Did Alana enjoy the risk? Was she even aware of it, thrilled by it in some vague way? They had all seen so many horrors, delved into the minds and histories of killers whose psychologies defied understanding. Alana thought Will was a killer, but she knew Hannibal was one. Perhaps she’d sat with him after he’d smashed Tobias Budge’s skull, sipped tea and held his hand while he oh-so-bravely held back tears. Hannibal played a touching, sensitive victim in a way that made it easy to overlook how easily he could kill either one of them.

Will had poked around Hannibal’s office many times, half in absent exploration, half with genuine curiosity. He’d looked at the books, the antiques, the drawings and scalpel, and the pencils that might not snap and splinter until they had already pierced flesh far too deeply. The medical bag that spoke of consideration for patients’ needs alongside a much greater consideration for his own. Will had opened the desk drawers looking for a gun, once. He could be sure these hadn’t been there at the time. But if nothing else, Hannibal was an expert planner.

When he turned back, Hannibal was lying on the chaise longue the way it was intended to be used. In repose, he could be a patient explaining his woes. Will wondered if anyone ever lay there and spoke to Hannibal. If anyone ever lay there with quite such an impressive erection.

He would have asked anyone else to be gentle, to be slow. It had been a long time since he'd had any kind of sex, and much longer since sex like this. But Hannibal would do what he liked and, gentle or not, it wasn’t an impossibility to imagine that Will might like that too.

“Are you the best she’s ever had?” Will asked, moving up and over, resting on Hannibal’s hips, rubbing Hannibal’s cock with his ass. 

Hannibal took the lubricant and condom from him. “Who’s to say?”

“Who’s to say she doesn’t throw her head back and think of me?” His hands rested on Hannibal’s chest as Hannibal set down the condom, reached to cup Will’s ass, spread his legs. 

Hannibal smiled in that wry way he had. “And will you be thinking of her?”

“With you inside me?”

“Of being her, then. Better to know only what she knows.”

Fingers slid over him, into him. “You’d like it better if she knew. If she saw you, and still wanted you. Still took the risk. You could overpower me at any time. Kill me as I came. Or not. But you’d know I was thinking it. That I was waiting for it.”

“Half disappointed that it didn’t happen.”

Hannibal laid a hand on Will’s cock now, the lubricant making the slide as easy as it was when Will moved his own hand back, rubbing Hannibal against him. It wasn’t like being with a woman, could never really be. But biology wasn’t the point, had never been the point for Hannibal.

“Does she imagine a future with you?” Will asked. “Moving in here, sharing your secrets, having your children… Do you imagine that too?” He picked up the condom packet and ripped it open. “It’s always a risk. One little tear and you’ll have another Abigail, to mold and shape.” He tossed the condom aside, Hannibal so dauntingly hard in his grasp.

Hannibal moved his lips, broke the gaze and pushed back on Will’s hips. It wasn’t slow, that push inside him, and there was no hesitation. But the sudden pressure, the pressing of flesh against untouched nerves, only burned in his cock and belly and thighs. He leaned forward, moved back into it as his lips touched Hannibal’s. “You’re going to come in me,” he said, and if it was anything like an order, it was hushed with want and fear. “Even deeper than you already have. We already had a child together. Who knows? Maybe there’ll be another one day.”

They kissed, Hannibal’s hands exploring, stroking his back as Will moved and Hannibal moved, a gentle sort of fucking as fucking went, Hannibal bending his knees and pushing up into him as Will moved down. “Yeah, nice and deep,” Will said between kisses. “So I can feel every inch of you.”

He’d never imagined Hannibal would be one for sex talk. Hannibal was all touch and movement, the ridges of his scars stroking over Will’s ribs and arms, the tension in his thighs evident every time Will’s body met them.

“Do you know how long I’ve thought about this?” he whispered. Hannibal’s cock was nudging very pleasant places inside him, and it was already hard to frame the words he needed to say. “How many nights? But you were always… otherwise engaged.”

The breath Hannibal let out by his ear, the way Hannibal grabbed the back of his head, was almost a confirmation that Alana had said the same thing, or something like it. 

“I wanted to tell you… Break down and ask you to just get _inside_ me, no matter where we were. Your dining room or this office or your _car_ …” Will rested his head against Hannibal’s shoulder, didn’t resist the low moan that had been building in his throat, coalesced from the pleasure and heat between his legs. “But you’ve been inside me for a long, long time, haven’t you?”

Hannibal’s fingers streaked sweat up Will’s spine, right to the nape of his neck. “Turn around,” Hannibal said.

The chaise longue was just a little too broad to straddle, so Will sat back on bended knees as he had before. It was all so much easier, Hannibal slipping inside, finding the motion again. But now Hannibal had one arm around his chest, drawing him back, the other hand caressing Will’s belly, then down, cupping his balls. 

“ _Fuck_ …” There was only so far that thought could stretch, so much he could do or say with intent, before his body simply moved and reacted. “Fuck me. Just… just fuck me.”

There was no more exposed position than this, like a wrestler on a mat who was utterly fucked in a different way. Hannibal moved his upper hand against Will’s throat – not pressing, not squeezing, but _there_ , feeling Will’s breaths and his pulse, as panic only succeeded in flooding his cock, flushing his body, with a more desperate need for pleasure.

He couldn’t imagine Alana like this, not even if he squeezed his eyes closed and imagined himself in her body, Hannibal’s expert fingers on her breasts, her clit, making her come over and over, before he thought of doing the same himself. Hannibal would do all that, but not like this. This was just for him.

Will’s arms were half-pinned under Hannibal’s, his head pressed to the hollow of Hannibal’s neck. What did Hannibal smell on him now? Sweat and adrenaline and all that blood pumping underneath such delicate, sensitive skin. 

“Will,” Hannibal murmured, and Will could feel the vibration of Hannibal’s voice in his own throat. “Good Will.”

Hannibal moved to grasp Will’s cock, bringing his pelvis up to thrust into Will even more relentlessly. Will might have marveled at his stamina if he had more than fractured thoughts. He could have such an intellect, such incredible insight, and then in mere minutes be reduced to his base instincts, needing to satisfy the whims of his cock and some deep, animal part of his brain that couldn’t be ignored.

“God, God, please.” Will’s breaths were rasping, ragged, as he lifted his head, seeing himself in Hannibal’s hand, as full and swollen as he felt inside. Maybe his body had lost the knack after so long, or maybe Hannibal knew precisely how to prolong this utterly ecstatic agony, but he so, so needed to come, and all other purposes and motivations had long fled his mind. “ _Hannibal_ , please...”

And then he finally felt it, the tightness, the inexorable building toward the utter, utter bliss of release as his head slammed back and his hips jerked upward, and for a second he was more acutely aware of everything in his entire body than he ever had been before: the spurts of come on his stomach and Hannibal still so goddamn stiff inside him, still fucking him through it all. And just as the euphoria began to fade, he felt Hannibal tense for the first time, his sudden thrusts so hard they might be painful if Will wasn't already high on endorphins, and, for a second, Hannibal’s hand tightened around Will’s throat.

Neither of them moved. 

Long moments later, Hannibal dropped his hand away from Will’s neck and stopped his idle stroking of Will’s softening penis. Will let a hand drift down to feel Hannibal’s come inside him. It seemed important, somehow, although he couldn’t remember why. Breathing seemed good enough for now.

Hannibal cleaned them both up with a damp towel, although Will was almost certain he was more concerned about stains on the furniture. 

“I’ll call a cab,” Will said. It was late. So, so late. But sleeping here didn’t seem like much of an option. He reached for his clothes, swallowing the wine left in his glass.

Even naked, Hannibal seemed the consummate professional, turning pages of the daybook on his desk, preparing himself for the morning's appointments. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to be alone tonight?”

Will wiped a hand across his eyes. “Afraid I’ll dream about tearing myself out from a dead horse?”

“There are things more terrifying than rebirth.” Hannibal cleared his throat and began to dress quickly. “Dr. Bloom almost always spends the night. It seems… the civilized thing to do.”

“And you’ll make me breakfast? And I’ll wear your shirts and we’ll take morning showers together and wind up back in bed?”

Hannibal raised his eyebrows. “Would that please you?”

“It would please Alana,” Will said. He finished buttoning his shirt, pulled his belt tight. “But then you don’t really want Alana.” He waited for a moment and then, without looking at Hannibal, walked to the door, retrieving his jacket. “Still, I’m sure we can find something else you’ll like.”

By the time he'd turned the lock, he could already hear Hannibal’s footsteps behind him.


End file.
